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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27049075">Here’s to the Men We Were</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dread_thehalfhanded/pseuds/dread_thehalfhanded'>dread_thehalfhanded</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>An unlearning, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Drinking &amp; Talking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fantastic Racism, Grumpy Old Men, M/M, Masturbation, Mentions of Roche/Foltest, Needles, Pining, Post-Canon, Set Post-W3, Vergen is happy and thriving under Saskia and I refuse to believe otherwise</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 19:48:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>15,549</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27049075</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dread_thehalfhanded/pseuds/dread_thehalfhanded</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a long, long road to the other side of war.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Iorveth/Vernon Roche</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>61</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>170</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In a no-name town in the lost province of Velen, Iorveth, once-leader of the once-feared Scoia’tael, went looking for a beer.</p><p>The lie that elves don’t drink was perpetuated mostly by racists, and those who benefited from not filling their inn with non-dh’oines. So, also racists.</p><p>Personally, Iorveth did not pursue alcohol with any particular fondness. He’d met Cedric. But that was a long time ago, and he felt old. Old enough to want to sit down across from a friendly face and drink until he couldn’t see that face anymore.</p><p>He pushed aside the poplar branches that covered his light trail from the road, stepped lightly across the shallow ford, and wrinkled his nose at the corpses still lying beside it, clawed with marks. Monsters about. But this is Velen, and there are always monsters. Lands with no kings, and no one to bring order out of what’s been lost.</p><p>Welcome to dh’oine territory.</p><p>He sighed, a reflex now at best, and frowned at the town. Just a few houses, barely big enough to be called a hamlet. Little enough chance that anyone would recognize him, especially now. Far enough from Flotsam that no one could tell one elf from another anyway.</p><p>Now, the real question was, would they serve an elf? He didn’t particularly care if they didn’t—easy enough to slide a town or two over, and what is this life but not getting what you want, when you want it.</p><p>Inn on the corner, at least one dwarf outside?</p><p>It would do.</p><p>---</p><p>Inside, the inn smelled about as foul as he’d expected. It’s not a dh’oine inn unless someone’s shat on the floor in the last week and there are at least four unidentifiable stains on every table. He scanned the room, looking for guards, armored men with bad attitudes, and found none. A few peasants, a group of dwarves wagering a truly impressive amount of chickens on a game of Gwent, and the odd stained traveler or two keeping to themselves.</p><p>Well enough.</p><p>The innkeep didn’t even blink at him, just demanded to know what he wanted.</p><p>“Beer.”</p><p>“And what kind? Got Redanian Lager, Temerian Rye, Nilfgaardian Lemon if you're up to it.”</p><p>He looked very carefully at the board behind her head, as if deciding. He did not have any opinions on the subject.</p><p>“Temerian Rye.”</p><p>For old time’s sake. The lemon might have been good—fruit, at least—but he refused to spend money on anything made by black ones. The woman nodded, and held out her hand for his dirty crowns. He dumped what he hoped a reasonable sum was into her hand, and she just bit the first one to check and took the rest. Good to know he looked as shady as ever.</p><p>He accepted his beer, and sniffed at it curiously. Smelled acrid, not sweet, like he remembered. How long had it been since he’d had something alcoholic?</p><p>Turning, he scanned the room for a seat. A few tables behind the dwarves, he found an empty ring of chairs against the wall, next to a window, with a line of sight to the door. Not an elf in the place, but beggars can’t be choosers, and what’s an elf to a beggar?</p><p>He’d settled himself in his chair just long enough to develop opinions about the indoor voices of dwarves when one of the dh’oine at the table across from him choked into his drink.</p><p>“Fuck—” came the spluttered curse, and Iorveth froze.</p><p>He would know that voice anywhere. In the forests of Flotsam, in the mountains of Mahakam, in his darkest dreams.</p><p>But here?</p><p>The hooded man who’d spoken coughed a few more times, fabric folded over his face enough that Iorveth couldn’t be quite sure. The nose was wrong, for one thing, the posture too bent. Perhaps he’d been wrong. Paranoia was a bad look on someone his age—</p><p>Vernon Roche shrugged back the hood of his cloak and looked him in the eye. Same scars, same dark bags under his eyes, a few more crow’s feet. Same grim lines across the forehead—did the man ever smile? Not wrong then.</p><p>He tensed, slowly, as to not telegraph his intentions. Just an elf, relaxing on the outskirts of old empires, nothing to see here.</p><p>Internally, he was ready to throw the beer and leap through the window the moment the man’s hand moved for his weapon. Or raised his voice. Hells, all he had to do was call out the bounty that someone surely still had on him—</p><p>But Roche just jerked his head at him, indicating the chair opposite. Alone at the table, with Iorveth alone in his corner, there weren’t a lot of options regarding his intentions. That. Appeared to be an invitation. To his table.</p><p>What. What the fuck.</p><p>Still, there wasn’t much to do but go. He got up, slowly, mug cradled against his chest, glaring.</p><p>“What are you playing at?”</p><p>Roche looked up at him as he approached, and he was struck by how deep the circles under his eyes had worn. Purple tracks deep into the skin. His nose had clearly been broken at least once more since Vergen, and he looked about as haggard as Iorveth felt.</p><p>Roche just sighed.</p><p>“Can’t greet an old friend?”</p><p>“Friend? Forget about all the times you tried to kill me?”</p><p>Roche glanced around the tavern once more, and nudged his hood back up. No chaperon now, and uniform more grey now than blue, he looked more a vagrant than a soldier. Fitting.</p><p>“You might be a little more subtle,” he hissed. “And you had it out for me, too. Never took the killing shot.”</p><p>Iorveth sat. Might as well.</p><p>“Neither did you.”</p><p>He didn’t know why he said it defensively. Maybe it had been the jab at his subtlety. Petty enough here at the end of the world, when Roche of all people wanted to sit down and chat. Not one of the other patrons had bat an eye at their exchange, or paid them a moment’s mind. The world goes on, season after season.</p><p>“Didn’t answer my question,” he growled, returning to the topic at hand, “What are you playing at, Vernon?”</p><p>Roche didn’t flinch at the use of his proper name, but his eyelid twitched. Good.</p><p>“Getting hard of hearing in your old age? Nothing to play at anymore.”</p><p>“Where are your Stripes? Your hired killers?”</p><p>“They’re dead.”</p><p>Oh. Iorveth took a long sip of the stinging, bitter liquid in his mug. He choked, coughed, and swore, as Roche laughed suddenly.</p><p>“Yeah, that stuff is shit.”</p><p>He hacked a few more times, then licked his lips.</p><p>“Condolences,” he wheezed out.</p><p>“Long past. All gone but Ves. And she’s more vicious now than I ever was. Has her own command now. A gods-awful Redanian, through and through.”</p><p>“I believe it,” Iorveth heard himself saying. He remembered the one woman in Roche’s ranks, who’d had enough venom in her for all the rest of them put together.</p><p>“Where’s your squirrels? Don’t you have some trees to climb, some non-dh’oine city to found?”</p><p>At that, he did smile. The one good thing he’d done in all the long years with the Scoia’tael.</p><p>“We did. Built the whole thing under Saskia. Elves finally have a place of their own. Well, elves, dwarves, and humans even, when they feel like it. A free city.”</p><p>“Why are you here, then?”</p><p>Iorveth smiled with half his face, a bitter thing he still put on so folk wouldn’t shy away when he said what came next. Not that he had many to tell.</p><p>“Odd enough, they didn’t need me anymore. And who wants to feed the monster when it no longer serves your purpose?”</p><p>Roche just cocked an eyebrow. Iorveth thought he, at least, might understand this better than most.</p><p>“I remind them of war," he added. "All I’ve done for years is make war, start war, build war. I don’t know how to be at peace. I made folk… Uncomfortable.”</p><p>“They ask you to leave?”</p><p>No one <em>said</em> anything. But doors locked in quiet dh’oine homes when he passed, dwarven leaders left certain public-facing council meetings unmentioned. Even elves, his old soldiers, never quite relaxed or played their flutes with that once-abandon when he passed. As if they expected him to sound the battle horn again, and call them all away from the lives they’d built.</p><p>For all he’d once dreamed of peace, of home, it seemed he’d won peace for the keeping of better men. Vergen had no need of soldiers now. Mothers held their children close—<em>elven </em>children—when he passed them in the street. He’d been an unpleasant memory of a time now past. An echo, remaining too long after the song has finished.</p><p>“No.,” he said, staring down at the viscous brown liquid. “I didn’t give them the chance.”</p><p>“Sorry to hear that.”</p><p>The man sounded as if he meant it. Unhealthy habit, that.</p><p>“Don’t be. I’ve been too long out of cities to settle well again.”</p><p>Omitting that he’d never really had the proper opportunity.</p><p>Roche nodded. They drank without further comment for a while, each left to their own thoughts and the burning of their tongues.</p><p>Vernon’s presence was familiar, almost comfortable. He knew the man, as well as one can reasonably know someone whom you have studied every hateful minutiae of their existence for years. However long ago that was.</p><p>Still. He was glad to see him. Much in the same way you are glad to see your cat, though it will only drag some dead thing to your feet within the hour, maggot-ridden and gnawed. He waited for the maggots, but would take what he could, while it lasted.</p><p>Slowly, intentionally, he began to relax into their island of silence in the clattering tavern.</p><p>“This stuff is appalling,” he finally agreed with Roche’s assessment.</p><p>Roche raised a single eyebrow.</p><p>“Told you.”</p><p>Vernon leaned back in his chair, and ran a hand through his short hair. Head thrown back, firelight playing over the deep pits in his sunken skin, he looked less a shadow of the man he’d been. The sight made him strangely nostalgic for a camaraderie that had never existed—and then he wanted to vomit.</p><p>“I see you’ve adjusted to life without Foltest,” he said, to even the sudden score.</p><p>He noted the flicker of pain that crossed the man’s face. So, that wound had not healed, then. But it passed, quick as it came, and Roche sat the heels of his chair back down on the floor and sighed.</p><p>“Gods, that was a long time ago.”</p><p>Iorveth smiled. Liquor had begun to burn through his veins, shattering like glass behind his dead eye. Was this what it was like to live without pain? Perhaps Cedric was onto something.</p><p>“You know, that was the one thing that never quite made sense about you,” he said aloud, slurring each word a little into the next. Just a little.</p><p>Roche frowned at him, then took a drink.</p><p>“What was?” he asked, when Iorveth did not follow the statement further.</p><p>It was the elf’s turn to drink, consider.</p><p>“Why… him? You hunted Scoia’tael, but you didn’t hate us. You did it because he asked you to. Made you better at it than anyone else. Th’ best, even. Why?”</p><p>The man stared at him for a long, moment. Iorveth thought he would not answer, but finally he took a short breath, and spoke quietly, barely above a whisper.</p><p>“Folte—he. He was my king. He was everything.”</p><p>Iorveth snorted, not quietly at all.</p><p>“Everything, yes. A sister-fucker. A racist. A murderer.”</p><p>“Keep it down,” said Roche quickly, hushing him with a flapping hand like a child. Iorveth started to sneer at him, but Roche cut him off—</p><p>“And to a kid on the streets of Vizima? Everything.”</p><p>The conviction in Roche’s voice stopped him short on the edge of a sharp insult.</p><p>“He was a great man. Not a good one, sometimes, but great,” Roche continued, a softness in his voice. “Like the kind you read about. The old generals, from before the conjunction. He knew how to inspire the best in people, even if he fell short himself. It’s complicated.”</p><p>“Hmm,” said Iorveth, unimpressed. The extermination of an entire race or two seemed pretty uncomplicated to him.</p><p>But with the room spinning around him, and the fire warm on his dead cheek, it no longer really mattered. What of it?</p><p>“I don’t expect you to understand.” Roche sighed, flatly, and stared at the grooves on the table. “I don’t.”</p><p>He shook his head, brushing the topic away like cobwebs in the attic-corners of the mind.</p><p>“I’m getting more to drink. Want something?”</p><p>Iorveth looked down at his mug. It was almost empty, wasn’t it?</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>He drained it in one acidic draught, and handed it to the man—who was now standing in front of him, when had he gotten there? Very, very carefully, he placed it in the outstretched hand, with the flourish he would have used to hand such things to a servant. Almost a century ago, that. It felt good to have the dh’oine in such a role, though he’d never know it.</p><p>Roche took the mug from him with wry amusement in his eyes.</p><p>“When was the last time you had anything alcoholic? No offense.”</p><p>“Lifetimes ago,” said Iorveth, grinning up at him. “More, please.”</p><p>Roche shrugged.</p><p>“Your funeral.”</p><p>Iorveth watched him go, remembering the little blue hat that once wrapped around his head like a tea-towel as he floated now bare-headed through the crowd of patrons. Why did dh’oine insist on the most ridiculous fashions?</p><p>After a moment, he lost sight of him amongst the others. It had never occurred to him before just how short Roche was. Short, and slender, as dh’oine went. Odd, for a soldier, but Roche had managed just fine.</p><p>Who would have thought, that when everything else had gone, Vernon Roche would still be around? Like his namesake, crawling out from under a fallen log whenever you have thought him long-dead. Flailing his little legs and looking for another body to decompose.</p><p>The man in question appeared at his elbow again, long before he was ready, and he pulled himself away from the visual of Roche with tiny antennae with difficulty.</p><p>“Didn’t know what you wanted, so I got us the same. Rye?”</p><p>Iorveth nodded and took the mug without hesitation—he could have sworn Roche smiled, but when he looked closer, it was gone.</p><p>Roche heaved himself into the seat opposite him again.</p><p>“What are you doing here, Squirrel? Had plenty of questions for me, tell me something about yourself.”</p><p>Himself? What was there to say? The story ends at the end of the war, nobody cares what happens after.</p><p>He shrugged, and took a deep drink from his new mug. The liquid stung, foul and terrible, burning now on the edges of his vision like fire-paper held to the flame.</p><p>“Hunt, mostly. Hunting is simple. I try not to make it more complicated. Unofficially, I track down the last of the Scoia’tael and send them to Saskia.”</p><p>“Why unofficially?”</p><p>“Told you. Vergeni don’t trust me.” He paused, and drank. Stuff wasn’t so bad, now. “And why would they?”</p><p>“You fought for their freedom?”</p><p>That did make him laugh, the liquor letting it bubble up from his gut like a fountain in the old forests, before the land ran black with dh’oine.</p><p>“As you men would say, that ‘ain’t shit’. I disgraced my race for years, according to most. We are a proud race, Vernon, we do not forget easily.”</p><p>“So, you expect me to believe that the infamous elven warlord is wandering through no-man’s land with no objective? Just, taking a joyride, don’t want anything for yourself?”</p><p>Iorveth grinned, the half-face grin that made men shiver in their poorly-crafted boots.</p><p>“Maybe I came here to hide.”</p><p>“Ah, I fucked that right up, didn’t I? Enemy number one.”</p><p>Iorveth hummed, though he couldn’t think why the thought pleased him. He shrugged it off, struggling to focus in the tilted room. Bloede dh’oine construction. No structural integrity.</p><p>“Besiiides,” he slurred again, letting himself relax again into the warmth in his blood, “What is there left to want?”</p><p>Roche didn’t have anything to say to that, and the conversation died again, less comfortably this time. It had grown dark outside, the air chiller, and the tavern had begun to empty out. Iorveth watched them file out, dwarf by dwarf, the bard following along soon after. Vergen’s taverns stayed full late into the night, these villagers were weak.</p><p>“I should go,” he said, finally, when they were nearly the last ones left.</p><p>Roche raised his head from staring into the dregs of his cup.</p><p>“Where?”</p><p>That was the question, wasn’t it? Had been all this time. Night wouldn’t drop below freezing, still several hours left before dawn. He could leave, find a tree close enough by to deter monsters, catch a few hours. Joints would be stiff in the morning, but when were they ever not?</p><p>Iorveth shrugged and drained his mug. He started to rise, but Roche cleared his throat obviously and he paused.</p><p>“Get a room at the inn?”</p><p>“No coin for that.”</p><p>“Stay with me?” said Roche, without looking at him, “You’re in no condition to go outside.”</p><p>“’M an elf, you don’t know what my conditions are.”</p><p>He swayed as he stood, and nearly fell over into Roche’s lap. Would have been tragic, that. The last fall of Iorveth, survivor of the Vrihedd Brigade, leader of the—</p><p>“Yeah, you’re not going anywhere.”</p><p>Roche caught him under one arm and stood with him, removing him from their table with a sigh. He was warm, and solid, and Iorveth found the sensation so pleasant that he allowed himself to be hauled bodily out of the tavern.</p><p>---</p><p>A quick investigation of Roche’s room at the inn yielded three blankets, one cot, and one pillow. Roche gestured wordlessly at the cot, and Iorveth shook his head, taking one blanket from the neat pile and spreading it out by the fire.</p><p> “Not afraid I’ll stab you in your sleep?” drawled Iorveth, sprawling easily on his stolen trophy.</p><p>The fire was good, nice. He had forgotten how much dh’oine liked fire, and right now he couldn’t blame them.</p><p>“Maybe I’m hoping you will,” said Roche, dryly.</p><p>He stood over Iorveth, another blanket over his arm. Wordlessly, he held it out.</p><p>Iorveth took it, and as his hand closed over the man’s, it felt a tremor run up Roche’s arm. He, too, was warm. Familiar. Skin rough, weathered, nails chipped and fingers calloused from the spear and the sword. The old hatred stirred in him for a moment, Roche close enough now he could still see the faded lilies on his tunic, and he remembered hunting this man, catching him, being caught. The endless thrill of it.</p><p>It was <em>more</em>, more than he’d felt in a long time.</p><p>He took the blanket and turned away, coiling into a knot with his armor still on and the blanket still spread over himself. In silence, Roche took the cot, and Iorveth heard the soft clanking of buckles undone, the jangle of armor spread over the chair. Strange, that he would disarm here, in front of a squirrel who once would have jumped at the chance to strike him unawares.</p><p>
  <em>Perhaps he does wish me to kill him. But I shall not oblige.</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The morning found him too soon, and miserable. Before he was really totally conscious, he was vomiting into the piss-bucket the filthy bloody dh’oine kept in their rooms—a new experience for him, and not a good one.</p><p>Wonderful, he thought, resting his pounding head on the cool floor. His face hit smooth wood, worn with the filthy boots of thousands of dh’oine stamping in from their sties and lechery. That is to say: A new low.</p><p>“Told you,” said a sleep-rasped voice from the other side of the room, and Iorveth’s eye flicked open.</p><p>Oh. Right. <em>He </em>was here.</p><p>Iorveth’s stomach threatened to make itself known again, for a variety of reasons now, and he groaned.</p><p>“It’s just a hangover, you’ll live.”</p><p>Roche sat up, hair sticking out in every direction—<em>he had hair</em>—and conspicuously shirtless. His pecs carved deep lines into his chest, stark outcroppings of muscle over a slim gut painted with ink and scars. Sinew knotted over his shoulders, and tattoos spilled down his ribs all the way under the blanket. Said blanket folded over and inched downwards as Roche sighed and stretched, eyes closed, still with no further clothing in sight—</p><p>This was a really, truly overwhelming morning.</p><p>Head pounding, Iorveth shut his eyes and took one breath at a time. Gods, he wanted to be sick so badly. It was a primal urge, if he’d been a dog in a trap he’d gnaw at fur and bone until he could pull himself free. This venom ate him from the inside out.</p><p>Belatedly, he heard buckles and rustling and registered that the human had gotten up only as he stepped over him to leave the room.</p><p>“I’d tell you to stay there, but I don’t think that’s a concern.”</p><p>Iorveth had never wanted to put an arrow through his skull quite so badly. Bastard, tricky whoreson, dh’oine bastard, fucking human bastard, he’d show him, he’d be halfway to Nilfgaard by the time he came back—</p><p>He made it to kneeling before the poison in his belly made itself known again, hitting him like no blow ever had. Coiling back down and in on himself, he almost whined. Too bright. Why must the body betray itself? Seven arrows he’d taken in all his years, a dozen cuts, two daggers, and a spear to the eye, and still <em>this</em> put him on the fucking ground.</p><p>He was getting old.</p><p>The door slammed open again, and muddy dh’oine boots stained his bleary vision.</p><p>“Eat this.”</p><p>A plate clattered down next to his face, and the boots walked away. Snarling at the command—<em>he gives orders so easy, like he was born for it</em>—Iorveth peered at the plate. Sausage, eggs, bread, all human food.</p><p>The wrinkle that formed between his eyebrows was nearly involuntary. One sniff felt enough to make him sick again.</p><p>“If you won’t, I will,” said Roche.</p><p>The human settled down to eat in the chair by the window as though nothing at all odd or strange had occurred. On his lap, he balanced his breakfast and a large scrap of folded paper that he peered at between bites. Gods, how he hated him.</p><p>“Why am I here?” hissed Iorveth, scooting slightly away from the plate.</p><p>Roche did not even look up.</p><p>“Well, you tried to drink your weight in booze last night and then sleep in a tree, and I elected not to let you do that.”</p><p>“I should shoot you where you stand.”</p><p>Speaking of, where was his bow?</p><p>He scooted back to the right, dragging his cheek against the floor so he could strain his good eye to the door. Ah. There, his bow sat upright in the corner by Roche’s swords.</p><p>Still, the human remained fixed on his little paper as if it were all that was good and holy in the world. Iorveth felt a ridiculous stab of jealousy.</p><p>“When you can stand, be my guest.”</p><p>Best not to prove him wrong on that count, yet, calculated Iorveth. Slowly, tentatively, he took a single biscuit from the plate. Small, soft, a bread-like substance—it would do.</p><p>---</p><p>When the plate had been emptied bite by bite, Iorveth sat up with some care with the last sausage pinched delicately between two fingers. His head pounded, but his stomach had steadied, and really all he wanted was to punch someone several times and then sleep for a day and a night.</p><p>Unfortunately, only Roche was at hand.</p><p>“Don’t you have non-humans to torture, make the world a more miserable place?” he snapped, voice too loud in the small room.</p><p>At that, Roche looked up at him sharply.</p><p>“That’s not my job anymore.”</p><p>“Hah! Then what is? Here I thought you were a one-song bard."</p><p>The vitriol boiled out of him, harsh and directionless, his own shame made weapon. At his being here, at his kindness, at Iorveth’s own weakness in front of his once-enemy. Last night had been a mistake, a mistake of twelve different kinds.</p><p>Roche waved the little paper at him without reacting further.</p><p>“It was Geralt’s idea, actually.”</p><p>“What was?”</p><p>“I’m taking contracts. Not monsters, obviously. But the other ones. Lost dogs, bandit camps, missing wagons. Pays okay.”</p><p>A strange barking laughter burst out of his chest at that. Vernon Roche, savior of the people, Vernon Roche, your friendly neighborhood watchdog. Vernon Roche, leashed at last.</p><p>Roche raised an eyebrow, clearly not seeing the same humor in the situation.</p><p>“What else am I supposed to do? Settle down and farm? Work for Redania? For Nilfgaard?” He shook his head. “Everything I’ve ever done has been for Temeria."</p><p>“And finding lost dogs is what Temeria needs?”</p><p>“If all that’s left are her people, then—yes.”</p><p>Iorveth shook his head, a half-gasp of laughter still in his throat. The image of Vernon Roche, the king’s attack dog turned heroic errand-boy? It was too much.</p><p>“I’m surprised anyone accepts your help.”</p><p>Vernon frowned at him, a little of the old temper flickering behind his eyes.</p><p>“Most peasants would barely recognize their own mothers. Now, before you have anything else awful to say, finish that, and then get out.”</p><p>His tone was final, and Iorveth finally got the sense that he had punched low enough. It did not please him as much as he’d thought it would.</p><p>Still, he nibbled his sausage in relative quiet.</p><p>Then: “What’s your contract for today, <em>Witcher?</em>”</p><p>Vernon glared at him, and said nothing.</p><p>“Come on. Recovering a lost maidenhead?”</p><p>“Knew I should have left you to the wolves. Or worse, the innkeep.”</p><p>“She seemed nice enough to me. Let’s see. No drowners for you, wouldn't trust you with an arachas, and you certainly can’t track like an elf. Doesn’t leave a lot of opportunities. Hmm.”</p><p>He paused; sausage held up like a thinker’s pen. Now, the question was not where to drive the knife, but <em>when</em>… Fuck it.</p><p>“Looking for daddy?”</p><p>Roche’s fists clenched, and he put the empty plate down on the floor without saying a word. He exhaled slowly for the space of several seconds.</p><p>“I will be gathering flowers for a young lady who does not wish to venture into the woods alone, elf, and I will be paid in enough coin to feed myself for several days—which is more than can be said for you.”</p><p>“What flowers?” pressed Iorveth, just to be a dick.</p><p>“Damiana, honeysuckle, blue lotus,” spat Roche, glaring now.</p><p>Odd combination for a human herbalist to ask for. Not much use in alchemy, mostly ceremonial among the more traditional elves. Those were the sacred herbs used by young elves, specifically elven women—on the eve of their—</p><p>“Those are elven herbs, are you working for an elf?”</p><p>The quick narrowing of Roche’s eyes told him all he needed to know.</p><p>He snorted.</p><p>“You won’t know how to find any of those with your fat fingers, or store them right. She accept you? She know a human will bruise all her blossoms long before they see her bridal bed?”</p><p>Roche snorted, and stood.</p><p>“My contract, I claimed it.”</p><p>Iorveth put his plate aside and struggled to his feet. The world did not seem quite so terribly bright now, with his stomach settling and the pounding behind his eyes diminished.</p><p>He should thank the dh’oine.</p><p>He would not.</p><p>Scooping his bow onto his back, he checked his straps, his blades, ensured his quiver was still half-full. Pointedly ignoring the blankets still puddled on the floor by the dying fire, and the vomit in the bucket, he padded to the door on still-unsteady legs. At the threshold, he turned.</p><p>“Have fun fucking it up.”</p><p>The dh’oine stared back at him, eyes dark and tired, and shrugged.</p><p>It did not matter to Iorveth one whit that his gaze was weary and laced with more pain that he remembered. It did not.</p><p>He shut the door behind him with a quick snap, and padded down the inn stairs.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It took Iorveth exactly two hours under the harsh sun of near-midday to realize that he had perhaps made something akin to a mistake. Not enough water, too much movement too fast—his head pounded, and even in the stillest forest, under waving leaves, the sun burned at the blank patches in his vision, the space behind his eye. Easy target for anyone, monster or otherwise.</p><p>Slipping downhill in search of running water and softer ground, his thoughts whirled and tumbled over each other.</p><p>Roche. Dh’oine. That dh’oine.</p><p>He’d seemed almost glad to see him. Together they’d walked a charade of half-friendship, for an evening. And he’d left like—like a churl. The thought curled his proud Aen Seidhe lip. Another young man on the fringes of his youth would <em>never.</em></p><p>Now it mattered little. Angry, hungover Iorveth acted a fool, and who would mark it? It <em>had </em>mattered and he should have thanked him—but far worse deeds had worn smooth the creases of the world.</p><p>Treading one foot in front of the other, he skipped rock-to-rock and sniffed. Water close by now, he could feel the change in air, hear the tinkle over stones. Wet-smooth wind, heavy with the scent of green growing things at the source, knotted into damp earth.</p><p>A few steps later, and he knelt at the creekbank. He filled his hands with the running water, bluer than any man could wish, and splashed it over his face and arms, gasping with the coolness. Enough to wake the dead, that water, poured from the arms of the mountain herself.</p><p>Unbidden, an old refrain rang in the back of his mind, sung by old men at the turn of the seasons in the old halls of the Aen Seidhe.</p><p>
  <em>Clean, mother, clean, father, wash the time and sting away. Clean, sister, clean, brother, wash the years and pain away—</em>
</p><p>Water dripped in rivulets down his chin, and he shook his head like an animal to dry it. A song for cleansing, a song for new beginnings and a bright spring.  </p><p>Some springs are kinder than others.</p><p>Those days, those songs, had long since rolled down to the sea. No one left to sing them, not in the lifetime since. Young men, better men, would teach new wisdom to today’s children behind the stone walls of Vergen. Surely one of them would think of a good song.</p><p>Iorveth bent his knees to sit stiffly on the creek bank, and put his head in his hands.</p><p>The purpose of his being here, in these woods, in this tired land, seemed so far away. Cold mud on his boots, ragged with weary sleep and sick, a dead eye blinking out on the ungrateful canvas of whatever remained of his sorry life.  </p><p>Vergen held the future, yet here he sat. He closed his eye.</p><p>“There is nothing for you here.”</p><p>A thoughtless insult, slurred at him like many others.</p><p>She’d been an elf. That first woman to say something. Young, white hair, green eyes, a little merchant stall, belly round with child. He hadn’t recognized her, at first, thought her a city elf through and through. But he’d looked back, again, and seen it in the slant of her brows, the fierce twist of muscle over her shoulders.</p><p>
  <em>Scoia’tael. </em>
</p><p>Not his, but near enough he might’ve told her name once.</p><p>The first to tell him, to his face, he wasn’t wanted anymore. After that, the rest were pebbles downhill before the slough of snow and sheetrock.</p><p>But such are the paths we walk.</p><p>He held the words in his mind, as he had for a year and a day, and so much longer, and let them slip along the surface until they flowed off the edge again. <em>Such are the paths we walk.</em></p><p>Staring into the crystalline water, his mind slowly trickled free of thought.</p><p>He could not have told how long he sat, how long the sun slanted overhead or the grass grew under his boots. Like many, many things, it no longer mattered.</p><p>At last, when the shadows lengthened on the other side of the trees, he rose.</p><p>Where to next? Hells if he knew, or cared. But somewhere in Velen a young elf wanted a wreath for her wedding bed, and fuck if he was going to let Roche ruin it for her.</p><p>---</p><p>Purple light filtered through the trees, dusk falling soft as a first snowfall on his face, his hands, the hair knotted behind his neck. Iorveth sniffed, the murmur of winter not far behind this chill. It would behoove him to head south soon, if he didn’t want icicles dangling from his ears.  </p><p>Iorveth sniffed again at the air, at the gathering dark.</p><p>He would give him until moonrise, he decided—though the pale light rose earlier and earlier this time of year. If he’d taken another road, stayed another night, it would not be his business—no elf would chase after a dh’oine unwanted. But there were only so many fields with flowers this rare and sweet—and none that this man would know.  </p><p>
  <em>Stomp-stomp-stomp-stomp. </em>
</p><p>He froze, fingers threaded against his bowstring, waiting. Human footfalls, thunderous, weight heavy in the heel of the foot.</p><p>It could be anyone.</p><p>But the moment the hooded figure rounded the bend, he knew who it was. His finger twitched against the bowstring, old instinct hard to master. One day, one day perhaps soon even. But not today.</p><p>He watched for long moments the bent figure, shrouded in cloak and hood, stepping with uneven stride along the far left of the road, as if he wished to blend into the long shadows. When had Vernon ever had a limp?</p><p>“Hiding from me, Vernon Roche?” he called, telegraphing his position even as he swung down out of the oak that had held him.</p><p>The figure stopped, and put hand to sword. For a single moment Iorveth wondered if he’d miscalculated, but he stepped onto the road anyway, arrow nocked but bow down, relaxed. If it came to it, he could shoot before he was in distance for a sword.</p><p>“Iorveth,” said Vernon, tiredly.</p><p>No reason to beat around the bush.</p><p>“Let me help you.”</p><p>“With what? Don’t need your help, said yourself I’m on my way to fuck things up with my ‘fat dh’oine fingers’. Piss off.”</p><p>The bite in the words fell on deaf ears. He would expect nothing less, and he deserved it anyway. Rather than respond, Iorveth fell in beside him, matching him stride for stride.</p><p>When several minutes passed without a word, he said, “Do you know how to cut the lotus so it will not wilt within the hour?”</p><p>Roche shrugged.</p><p>“Reckon I’ll do my best, can’t ask more.”</p><p>“I can do it. Show you how to wrap them, too. Them and the damiana. They can last for weeks with the right care.”</p><p>“Hmm.”</p><p>“None of them grow near here.”</p><p>“I know that, why do you think she put out a contract in the first place?”</p><p>Iorveth hummed, glancing down at the man. The hood still obscured his face, shaded in the first streaks of moonlight, but he could tell the dh’oine’s weariness by the timbre of his voice alone.</p><p>“Camping tonight?”</p><p>He nodded; a short one-syllabic answer.</p><p>“I know a place.”</p><p>A pause, then another nod. Iorveth hummed, and then swerved abruptly into the brush on the side of the road. Roche swore, and followed behind him, breaking through the thicket with all the grace of a hunted deer.</p><p>Iorveth had lied—he had no idea where they were, or if there would be “a place”. What he did know, however, was how to follow the growth of the trees and the whisper of their roots through the earth, and soon enough found their sanctum.</p><p>They broke into a small clearing in a grove of trees, brush fading away into a circle of roots and stone, with bare earth beneath. Roche pointedly did not comment, but set to work immediately clearing space in the dark until they could start a fire. Not to be outdone, Iorveth slipped away for all of a few moments to pull mushrooms from under the lip of a nearby log.</p><p>The fire flickered between them, rising and falling, and they ate dry fungus together in silence.</p><p>“You play cards?” said Roche, finally.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Do you play? Gwent?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Technically speaking, he had two full decks, though he hadn’t played for ages. Not since leaving.</p><p>Roche appeared to have taken this for a yes, and had already begun to shuffle a black-and-gold deck.</p><p>“Ugh, you play with Nilfgaard?”</p><p>He shrugged. “I have the most of them, for some reason.”</p><p>Iorveth reached for his tattered cards. Monsters, as ever his best.</p><p>They played the first game in relative silence, the crackling of the fire the only sound besides the flipping of the cards. It unfolded much the way he expected from a Northern player—spy, decoy, weather, pass. Then the low-scoring second round, followed by the all-out “who has the most hero cards” third round. Uninspired, but not unexpected. Vernon won, thanks to a Letho card, and Iorveth remembered why he did not usually enjoy this game.</p><p>Still, a second game was easy enough to agree to. Wasn’t much else to do. Roche took both decks, and began to shuffle the first. Iorveth watched his fingers, thick and strong, sorting the cards dexterously.</p><p>“I understand, you know,” said Roche suddenly.</p><p>He flipped the cards, shuffled, and spoke again without waiting for a response, voice even rougher, gruffer than usual. </p><p>“Nothing mattered but Temeria. For a long time. Most of my life. And now that’s gone.”</p><p>“Temeria, or Foltest?”</p><p>The words left Iorveth unbidden, bitter, old hatred for Temeria’s king not easily shaken. He’d never even met the man, but Foltest had signed every anti-nonhuman edict in his own hand.</p><p>“Hard to separate the two. Both gone now.”</p><p>He handed Iorveth’s deck back to him, and drew the cards from his own deck for the next round. The depth of the exhaustion in Vernon’s voice was palpable, familiar, he recognized it himself. A better man would have seen it, stopped there.</p><p>Iorveth was not a better man.  </p><p>“Did you love him?”</p><p>Roche snorted, would have been angry when Iorveth knew him first, but now he just shook his head, and put down his first card. Melee: Impera Brigade Guard.</p><p>“You can’t ask me that.”</p><p>“We used to call you ‘Chief Cocksucker’, in the Scoia’tael.”</p><p>At that, he did flinch. Guilty? Iorveth laughed, a sharp sound. So, it <em>was</em> like that—he’d always wondered.</p><p>“Don’t look at me like that, Vernon. Who is going to turn you in here? And to whom?”</p><p>Roche passed a hand over his face, and even in the dim light Iorveth could tell the dh’oine cheeks had stained pink and crimson. <em>What a stunning weakness.</em></p><p>“Wasn’t like that, really. Not for long. You do stupid shit when you’re young. No one tells you how hard it is to leave behind.”</p><p>He trailed off, stared off to his left at the fire.</p><p>Iorveth laid down his nekkers, three of them.</p><p>“I had someone like that too.”</p><p>Roche’s eyes did not leave his hand. Not a flicker of interest passed over his carefully-schooled face.</p><p>“Did you?”</p><p>“Cedric. Far older than I. Led the Scoia’tael when I joined them. I was there for him, for a long time. Until I grew old enough to disagree, and he came to prefer the bottle. Can’t say I blame him, now. Perhaps he had the right of it all along. Eat, drink, and sing while the sun is still in the sky.”</p><p>“Hmm.”</p><p>“I lived long enough to disappoint the ones who meant the most to me. I envy you for that, Vernon.”</p><p>He put down another card, ranged this time. Roche held up his hand for a pass, and they cleared the space between them for the second round. Opening: Brigade Guard, again.</p><p>“I’ve disappointed my fair share, elf. Don’t even.”</p><p>Iorveth twisted his lip in his teeth. For such a predictable man, Roche was irritatingly confusing at times.</p><p>“But you’re not dead. Why this—” he gestured at the woods around them with a crone, “Why not settle down? For a Dh’oine, you’re young yet. The black ones are not the worst race to be conquered by.”</p><p>Roche raised an eyebrow, and Iorveth shrugged, refusing to stand behind the subtle slur.</p><p>“They’d leave you alone,” he added. “Shack up in a farm somewhere with a woman, have a dozen little dh’oine-lings.”</p><p>Roche laughed out loud at that, a snorting chuckle that sounded wholly inappropriate coming from him. Killers of women and elves don’t laugh like children with their fists full of sweets.</p><p>“That’s rich, coming from you, first of all. I don’t even like women. What's your excuse?”</p><p>Iorveth hummed, non-committal, and played another card.</p><p>“Not one for settling," he said, though that wasn't the half of it. "And it’s been so long since I’ve had either I don’t know that I could rightly express a preference anymore.”</p><p>“Saskia?”</p><p>Iorveth laughed, the bitterness of missing her not quite flushed from his system.</p><p>“Beyond me, in more ways than you know. Who told you about her?”</p><p>“Geralt, mostly. Hard not to hear things about the one kingdom Nilfgaard hasn’t been able to conquer, and doesn’t appear interested in trying for.”</p><p>“It’s less of a kingdom, and more of a—”</p><p>Roche waved his hand.</p><p>“Politics. I don’t give a shit anymore. What’s left to care about?”</p><p>“Flowers, apparently,” said Iorveth.</p><p>“Hey, I didn’t place the notice.”</p><p>They played another two games with much the same ease, words bandied back and forth as though the morning had not passed between them. Perhaps that, too, would cease to matter. </p><p>When the dh’oine finally tired, and announced that he would rest, Iorveth nodded.</p><p>“I’ll take watch.”</p><p>“Wake me when you want to switch.”</p><p>When Roche lay down, Iorveth tried not to watch too curiously as he spread out his blanket and cloak, and got between them with all the grace of a tree falling. Within moments, he slept, face-first with his arms tangled in his cloak, breath a small cloud on his lips.</p><p>Taking up his bow, Iorveth settled himself, back against a tree, to watch against the deepening dark. The fire burned low, only coals to tell the monsters of their presence. And if his gaze flickered across the lump-that-was-Roche more times than was strictly necessary, not one of the small nighttime creatures who observed it felt inclined to comment.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Do you know where you’re going?”</p><p>Iorveth <em>almost </em>swallowed the grin that came with the words. He’d refrained for a truly admirable amount of time, all morning and at least a few miles into a dusty, sun-stained afternoon. But they’d just passed a crossroads and definitely turned away from the hill country, not towards it.</p><p>And while couldn’t say he disliked savoring dh’oine failures, it wasn’t enough to want to wear out his boots any further.</p><p>Roche grunted.</p><p>“Near enough.” When the elf did not respond, he added, “Honeysuckle grows east of here, near Downwarren and further north, figured I could find some locals there and hope the other two are close.”</p><p>“They are not.”</p><p>The man huffed through his nose, and silence held for several minutes, their boot heels striking out of sync on the rough road they followed. Iorveth did not offer to elaborate: A single evening of Gwent does not entitle a dh’oine to any more dignity than he deserves—that is to say, none. Headstrong, heedless, fecund creatures.</p><p>Finally, Roche added, sounding pained, “Well, you got a suggestion?”</p><p>Ah. There it was.</p><p>“South,” said Iorveth, with the smallest of sharp smiles. “Take the old Bald Mountain trail to the hills, and you’ll find the damiana there. The other two grow nearby in Olena’s grove—or at least, they did. Honeysuckle ran wild, the lotus will be harder to find. If it’s still there.”</p><p>Roche snorted, “When was the last time you were in the area?”</p><p>Iorveth cocked his head, considering.</p><p>“A few decades? Three, four at most.”</p><p>“So, before anyone who lives there was born. Great.”</p><p>“Just because it was before you were born doesn’t mean you need to be sour, Vernon.”</p><p>He felt generous. With the sun warm against his skin, satisfaction at his inarguable correctness brimming in his heart, and no dh’oine for miles but the one beside him, it was almost like old times. Nothing but the road ahead, sword at his hip, bow at his back, and a clear purpose before his feet. Something to do. Someone to help.</p><p>Only, this time, Vernon Roche matched him stride for stride, instead of dogging his every step and matching his spies at every turn.</p><p>How the world changes.</p><p>Roche grumbled, but let it slide. Perhaps he too was feeling generous.</p><p>So caught in the warm of the sun and the strange, pleasant absence of negative feeling, it took Iorveth a moment to register the faint sound of hooves and the clank of mail.</p><p>He whipped around at the same moment as Roche, both turning to face the five-six-seven horsemen quickly overtaking them. Putting out an arm, he pushed Roche back to the side of the road even as the human reached for his sword.</p><p>“Just let them pass,” he hissed at the scowling human, “Don’t draw attention.”</p><p>The hooves thundered closer, and he heard the clank of mail, saw the curve of axes strapped to backs and no banners to mark an allegiance. </p><p>“Not Nilfgaard,” said Roche, peering around his shoulder and still frowning with his hand on his hilt, “And anyone else armed that well in Velen is bad news.”</p><p>He glanced around, looking for a tree to shelter them, but all were either scrub-brush or too tall for Roche to reach—and behind them, a chasm opened sheer into the earth. He settled for grasping Roche’s wrist and dragging him behind a bush just as the whites of the leader’s eyes became visible. Much too late.</p><p>Shameful, really. His Scoia’tael would have had a good laugh. Ciaran especially.</p><p>Pressed against the yellow prickling leaves, Roche jerked his wrist away and glared. Some good that did, as the hoofbeats slowed, and with a clatter and rattle the riders reined up.</p><p>“What’s this?”</p><p>Voice deep in a grating human register, slightly slurred. They’d been seen, what was even the point?</p><p>Iorveth stepped out from behind the bush, ignoring Roche’s furious whisper.</p><p>“Well met, gentlemen,” he said, leaving his hands from his bow and his hilt.</p><p>The leader—the biggest and foulest, of course he would be the leader—grinned at him with checkered, tobacco-stained teeth, and swung off his overburdened horse. Straps of leather from a half-dozen different pillaged armors ranged over his chest and down to his torn Nilfgaardian leather trousers. But these were definitely no Nilfgaardians.</p><p>Scavengers. Vagrants. Bandits, preying with a vulture’s eye on the weak and alone. He knew the type—had been the type.</p><p>“What’s a pointy-ear doing out here all by his lonesome?” said the leader, a little greasy blonde curl falling out of a poorly-drawn ponytail.</p><p>Iorveth could smell the pigfat in his hair from where he stood.</p><p>“Haha, squirrely-boy,” chimed in another, tilted cap nearly falling over his left eye. Others joined in with his jeering, all laughter and slurs.</p><p>Ah, so, fools. The breed of strong-armed idiot that thrived on the broken skin of the world.</p><p>Iorveth crossed his arms and tried to look like the most reasonable party in this situation, though every sense screamed for his bow. Seven of them, one—two—of me—us.</p><p>“I’m journeying to my destination, same as yourselves.”</p><p>He could crush this man’s head on his knee, rip the other’s ear from his skull and have a knife through the next before the others on horses could become a problem. He took a step backwards.</p><p>“Hey. I seen you somewhat before?”</p><p>The third voice drawled, drooling with drink, but the man that uttered it could’ve been familiar. Thick hands, dark hair rolling up the forearms, a cleft chin: He’d threatened this man before. Perhaps killed someone he loved, a wife, a brother? A child?</p><p>He did not remember.</p><p>The man swung off his horse to get a closer look, and the big leader uncrossed greasy ham-hock forearms and hefted his hand-axe.</p><p>“Pointy-ear,” spat the leader, a jagged scar running across the lip making it hard for him to talk.</p><p>Iorveth took another step back. One more step, maybe two, and he could reach the treeline, scale a pine faster than any of these dh’oine could load a crossbow. Draw fire, let the human escape in the commotion, kill one at a time from the cover of leaf and bough.</p><p>He took another step back, and the big leader followed, sizing him up. Looking for weaknesses.</p><p>Fully off the road now, he signaled behind him in the old Scoia’tael tongue: <em>Run.</em> He did not know if Roche would understand—or care, if he did.</p><p>“You don’t belong here, bitch-boy,” spat the leader, smacking the haft of his axe against his hand.</p><p>Iorveth was aware he ought to be intimidated, according to the bandit playbook. Amazing, the confidence mere meat can give a man. Very well. Two could play at that.</p><p>“I’ll be along my way then,” he said, turning his scarred side towards them and watching their faces for recognition.</p><p>No one moved, and Iorveth smiled. So, death, then. A bit extreme for lack of a cultured upbringing, but worse has come for lesser offenses. Much worse.</p><p>The third man shouldered his way up, sweat sliding off him indiscriminately. Most of the others were clambering off their horses now, weapons drawn, nosing closer with interest. Scenting blood.</p><p>“Where’s your little goblin friend, pointy-ear? He gone crying home to mommy?”</p><p>Iorveth spared a glance behind him, and the foliage was, in fact, bare. Good. Roche had gone, slipped away. Down the ravine, if the man was smart. A strange sense of disappointment filled him—the Vernon he had known would never have run from a fight if begged on bended knee.  </p><p>He smiled again, and took another step back. He could smell the sap now, so very close.  </p><p>“Bet you he pissed himself.”</p><p>“Just like we’re gonna make you piss yourself, <em>squirrel</em>,” he spat the word</p><p>The following guffaws of laughter rang out loud enough to echo off the walls of the ravine—</p><p>
  <em>Thud.</em>
</p><p>Something hard and heavy hit the ground behind the bandits. As they turned with bumbling predictability towards the sound, the laughter died at once.</p><p>Seizing his moment, Iorveth lunged backwards, catching the bark of the tree in his left hand and already pulling himself up into the air to catch again—</p><p>“Hoo-a—”</p><p>A scream, a gurgle as life left the body.</p><p>From his clinging perch, Iorveth could just see a grey shape set upon by several others, before a horse reared in the scuffle and cut off his sight. And his shot.</p><p>He cursed.</p><p>Well, a fight had been started, so it would be rather lax of him not to participate, wouldn’t it?</p><p>Quick-soft, he leapt to the ground on all fours. In the movement of standing, he’d drawn his sword, and in another he leapt again and ran the bandit-leader through. The man had half turned, so it was easy to slip through the ribs, easy to wind into the guts and back out again.</p><p>“Get him, get him! Get the bugger—”</p><p>Too long since his sword had a target, too long since it flowed from shoulder-elbow fist into skull, and socket, and joint. Iorveth dodged an axe, slit a cheek, then dove under pair of stamping hooves to the other side of the bandits—</p><p>To Vernon Roche, holding two men at sword point with a third and fourth at his feet. In the split second before Iorveth could stab the closest man in the back—singular dishonor, to a human, yet he might still die by it!—the furthest man lunged for the thrust. Roche stepped, parried, leaned in—but the bandit had faked, and doubled upwards on the same line to the shoulder.</p><p>A deep cut. He drew blood.</p><p>How dare he?</p><p>In two steps Iorveth had the closest man skewered on his sword, on the third he slashed at the far man’s ear, blind rage in his hands. Thick, dark hair against his forearms, cleft chin as his foe parried. Known or not, for this he would die forever unknown.</p><p>Two solid strikes, steel against steel, winding, reaching, unyielding—and <em>there.</em></p><p>Flesh soft against his blade, the white-red gush of skin, fat, and blood as the man’s throat jagged at his hand. He choked, the unknown, and waved his sword once more, aimlessly, before shuddering down to the ground.</p><p>Iorveth stood over the man with the cleft chin, seeing the anger behind his eyes slide to fear, then to nothing at all, as he left this life. He felt no remorse. It had been a long time since he had killed a human, but some things are not easily forgotten.</p><p>“That man belongs to me,” he said, to the stranger’s body. No longer quite true, but someone else gnawing like a scavenger at what he had once hunted for so long? Impermissible.</p><p>Iorveth turned, seeking more, and found none. Only seven bodies in the dust, and horses shied far off down the track.</p><p>And Roche.</p><p>Roche, red, in the dust.</p><p>He dropped his sword with near-nerveless fingers, and went to him. The man was on his knees—still upright, good—hand against his cut shoulder. His hand flowed with blood, blood spattered the grey uniform, the dirt beneath.</p><p>It had never once occurred to Iorveth that Roche’s blood might be a precious thing.</p><p>Taking Roche’s hand away with his own, he parted the torn fabric, pulling it away from the wound where it stuck and clung. He felt Roche’s soft intake of breath as his chest contracted, heard the whistle of it between his teeth. The soft warmth of his bulk as he picked carefully, gently at the wound, to gauge its depth.</p><p>Deep. Flesh parted in shivers down to the bone, struck clean with a wide blade, a sharp bite. The bruising alone would take months to heal with perfect stitching.</p><p>“It’s bad,” said Roche, matter-of-factly, breath hissing in short jerks. “But I’ll live.”</p><p>Iorveth could not disagree with that.</p><p>“That was foolish of you,” he said instead, flicking out his knife.</p><p>Roche shrugged with his good shoulder, flinching at the sound of snapping metal.  </p><p>“Wasn’t gonna just leave you there.”</p><p>Iorveth cut a long strip from the bottom of his shirt, and gently tied it over the wound, carefully replacing muscle and skin (in the right order) before tying the cloth closed. He’d considered, briefly, cutting from the clothes of one of the dead men, but that struck him as inadvisable. At least he knew where his own tunic had been.</p><p>The space between them waxed and waned with his movements—the swift cut, the lean in as he wrapped cloth, moved flesh with careful fingers, the lean away as he pulled Roche’s arm out to tie the bandage tight. Roche made no complaint at any of it.</p><p>“Can you walk?”</p><p>Roche grunted, but stood without leaning against the elf. The right half of his uniform was stained with his own blood down to the waist, the whole sleeve spattered with it. His face paled, but he stood straight.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>---</p><p>One of the benefits of killing seven men on horseback in the middle of the woods is the sudden and unexpected guardianship of seven riderless horses. Scruples of such acquisition aside, two of said horses significantly shortened their travel time to the nearest settlement. Once there, it was but a simple matter to secure a room at the inn—despite the suspicious glare of the mistress of the house—rags, salve, and clean water.</p><p>It was less simple to convince Roche to let him touch his shoulder again.</p><p>“It’s fine,” he said, for the fifth or sixth time, sitting on the edge of the bed in their small room, face stark white and halfway through a recently-purchased bottle of rye.</p><p>“It is not.”</p><p>Iorveth knew little enough about humans and their irritating ways, but this particular one’s stubbornness ran deeper than was good for him. Hard not to notice. Unceremoniously, he dragged a stool over to him and took the injured arm without waiting for permission.</p><p>Roche twitched, glared, and said nothing.</p><p>Without bothering to untie the hasty bandage, Iorveth cut away the red sleeve and the tied cloth all in one go. None of it would be fit to wear again—he pointedly did not dignify Roche’s glare with a response as he cut the tattered once-blue cloth at the shoulder.</p><p>“If you’re mad about the uniform, it’s long past replacing,” he said, peeling the mess of bloody cloth down his arm and tossing it away.</p><p>“Says you,” came the answering growl, through gritted teeth.</p><p>False. Iorveth had replaced his gear a half-dozen times since Flotsam. It would do Vernon good to learn how to scavenge. And perhaps, how to let the past die, as well.</p><p>Settling Roche’s bare arm on his knee at the elbow, he looked closer at the wound itself. A straight, clean cut through the meat of the shoulder on the right, sloping down into the very top of the lateral head of the tricep. It would be irritating, but low-risk, and the muscle should heal.</p><p>He ran the rag over the red skin around the wound, tracing the strange, square lines of human muscle, cleaning before he began with thread. Such curious creatures up close. Roche was smaller than most, and still his body joined together in such blocky, inefficient ways. Sturdy, but what for?</p><p>He glanced up, and saw Roche with his head turned resolutely the other direction.</p><p>“Afraid to look?”</p><p>“Just get on with it.”</p><p>Arm was as clean as it was going to get, still leaking slightly if left without pressure. Iorveth turned away momentarily to gather what he needed for the stitching. When he turned back, he could see every line of the man’s body clenched, waiting for pain—so it seemed only natural to put his hand on the man’s thigh, to calm him. Touch was sacred to the Aen Seidhe, and they often comforted one another with hands rather than words. He did not know what to say, so it seemed only fitting.</p><p>What he was not expecting, was for Roche to huff a sigh, and relax so obviously into his hand it was <em>obscene.</em></p><p>He waited the appropriate three breaths for the calming touch to affect, then lifted his hand and returned to his work. If his cheeks had reddened—Roche still had his face buried in the table, so what did it matter?</p><p>When he split the skin with the fine-tipped needle, lacing one side to the other with slow, practiced hands, the focus of the task came naturally. A wound like any other—men and elf bleed all the same. Yet it was hard to stop his hands from lingering, reverentially, as he sewed flesh to flesh.</p><p>This man owed him nothing. Nothing, <em>nothing</em>, and less than nothing. Yet here he sat, with a scar that would follow him all the way to the end of his pitiful days. Questions on questions. </p><p>“Why?” he asked suddenly, not expecting an answer or entirely sure what he asked.</p><p>The place, the person, the wound and who had caused it, everything struck Iorveth as wrong, misplaced. He drove the needle in, harder than was perhaps necessary, and tugged it through the other side. A story that should happen to someone else, and not to him, an old Aen Seidhe whose time had long gone.</p><p>Why anyone so devoted to hunting elves would risk bodily harm to save one was beyond him.</p><p>“Woulda done the same for any of my men.”</p><p>It took Iorveth a moment to realize that he meant the Blue Stripes. Men long dead, long gone. This answered no questions, and raised others.</p><p>Even alone on the edge of obscurity, Roche still fought like a young man, with something to prove. Someone to protect. It would have been admirable, if it wouldn’t almost surely be the death of him, sooner or later. With sooner the more likely of the two.  </p><p>With a snap, he tied off the stitching and cut the thread. Iorveth ran his thumb over the edge of his work, a twisted dark line on the smooth skin, and nodded. Satisfied that it would hold, he patted the man’s thigh.</p><p>“It’s late. You should sleep,” he said gently.</p><p>The only light in the room flickered from the small candle. Roche looked up at him as he spoke, the dark shadows under his eyes drawn only darker by the inconsistent light, and Iorveth felt a strange welling of emotion in his chest.</p><p>He stood, sharp and too sudden, self-conscious with the moment.</p><p>“I am going out. Rest.”</p><p>While he heard the rustle of bedsheets and the jangle of unbuckling armor, he did not have to turn to know that Roche’s eyes followed him all the way to the door.</p><p>---</p><p>In the grey light of morning, Iorveth shuffled into their room with dew still wet on his hair. Roche stirred immediately at the sound of the hinges, and propped himself up on one arm to peer at him. His face was blurry with sleep, but somehow Iorveth could not meet his gaze.</p><p>Saying nothing, he came to the bedside with his arms full of yellow star-shaped flowers, stems cleverly cut in the pattern of herbalists and elves.</p><p>He bent over Roche without a word, and laid down enough cascading damiana blossoms for a half-dozen betrothals.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Iorveth slept most of the day, and well into the night. Curled on the floor by the foot of the bed in the spare blanket and his cloak, he woke only once, in the late afternoon, when Roche dropped his own cloak on top of him as well.</p><p>Under better circumstances, Iorveth would have complained, but it was cold and they had no fire. So, he curled into it without the complaints of a better day.</p><p>When he woke again, it was black-dark outside and Roche was sitting at the table, drinking again.</p><p>“Gonna make yourself sick like that,” was Iorveth’s first mildly-coherent statement.</p><p>Roche did not even dignify that with a response, but took another—smaller—sip from his bottle, pointedly not looking in the elf’s direction. The air felt strange between them, sparse, none of the easy camaraderie of other evenings.</p><p>“Good morning to you too,” said Roche, finally, with a tired sigh.</p><p>Iorveth sat up, bleary-eyed and groggy.</p><p>“What hour is it?”</p><p>“Late.”</p><p>Iorveth sniffed, refusing to have an opinion about the hour, and lurched to relieve himself. On the table, he noted as he passed, three vases held the truly prodigious amount of flowers Iorveth had returned with, neatly tended. He wondered if Roche had to ask someone how to care for them.</p><p>“You can sleep in the bed, you know,” said Roche, still not looking at him.</p><p>Iorveth sniffed again, vaguely cognizant of a stiff pain in his lower back, and fumbled at his buckles.</p><p><em>Mistake,</em> he thought, pissing into the small ceramic bowls humans were so fond of keeping around. Whatever had possessed him to go flower-picking in the middle of the night had passed, and now he felt mostly ashamed at the excessive display of… something.</p><p>It made him want to vault out the window and disappear into the tree line rather than risk answering questions. Or explaining. There’d been a debt to pay and he couldn’t deal with that. Not like flowers would make a huge difference, but wading through the muck of Velen in the middle of the night surely made a difference?</p><p>(It didn’t.)</p><p>None of this would have been a fucking problem if the human was slightly less suicidal.</p><p>Still, when he turned around again, Roche wordlessly pushed a plate of food at him and seemed to regard him with an exasperated patience, rather than an appetite for answers. He met Roche’s tired eyes, briefly, and realized the human was probably in too much pain for serious thinking. Good.</p><p>“How’s your arm?” he asked, between careful, peckish bites.</p><p>“Attached.”</p><p>The one-word answers grated on his nerves. Why must the human slit a conversation’s throat in the cradle?</p><p>He groused silently to himself while working his way through the rest of the plate. Chicken pulled from a cold bone, small buns, dried fruit. Not a terrible meal, all things concerned.</p><p>In slightly-alcoholic silence that followed, Roche finally cleared his throat. </p><p>“Well, that’s one down.”</p><p>Iorveth regarded the three vases on the table. While a handful of the flowers he had carefully selected the night before, felt by hand one from another in the dark, had begun to wilt, most kept as bright and vibrant as ever. They would keep until the girl’s bedding. Probably.</p><p>“It is.”</p><p>---</p><p>While Iorveth performed the obligatory—and useless—urging that Roche stay in their room the following day while Iorveth ran their botanical errands, this cause was lost before it began.</p><p>(“Just lost a little blood, I’m not bloody pregnant.”)</p><p>Besides, they had horses now, and if the stupid dh’oine was so determined to get himself killed, it wasn’t his problem, was it?</p><p>Except.</p><p>Except that it was.</p><p>On the sun-warmed hill near midday, Roche, damn him, found the honeysuckle first. He spotted it climbing in waves over a farmer’s stile, and had slid off his horse to go ask permission to gather it before Iorveth could stop him.</p><p>“Roche—Vernon—wait—”</p><p>Roche flicked his horse’s reins at him and grinned.</p><p>“Sour you didn’t see them first?”</p><p>“What if someone sees you?” he hissed, but Roche was already turning to go bother the farmer.</p><p>As he went, Iorveth wasn’t sure which was more irritating—that Roche wouldn’t prioritize his own safety, or that he—Iorveth—cared about said safety. What if the farmer recognized him? What if the little unassuming house was home to bandits, not tenacious peasants? He watched Roche’s grey back and bandaged arm all the way up to the house, fidgeting with the end of his bow.</p><p>Either way, when Roche returned, grinning, and sheared off a truly unnecessary number of vines one-handed, Iorveth only scowled.</p><p>“Three would have been plenty.”</p><p>Roche’s mood would not be clouded by an elf, and he swung awkwardly into the saddle without even a repartee, saddlebags bursting with small white flowers. His horse snorted, clearly not a fan of the arrangement.</p><p>Glowering, Iorveth pulled his mount’s head back onto the road. They’d been lucky with the honeysuckle. Now they just needed the lotus, and a rare enough variety at that. It might not even be in season.</p><p>---</p><p>When they crested the hill and began to slip and slide carefully down the other side, Iorveth saw a pool of blue lotus floating dreamily in crystal water. It made him want to stab someone through the kidneys several times. Nothing was ever simple and easy—especially not with humans involved. How dare pieces fall into place? How dare—</p><p>He slipped off his horse before Roche could identify the flowers, and knelt to cut the few stems they needed, eyes darting all around to make sure they weren’t watched, or followed, or about to be ambushed. One of those was quite enough.</p><p>The wind whistled over the ruined stone walls that surrounded the pool, whipping fallen leaves into their faces. Iorveth cut the first stems too fast, and nearly sliced his hand open in his hurry. When had his hands shaken so much?</p><p>“What do you think this place was?” asked Roche suddenly.</p><p>Iorveth stopped trying to bore a hole through the bushes with his eye, while slicing indiscriminately underwater, and looked up at him.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“This place,” he said again, gesturing with his good arm at the crumbling ruins. “Who was here before us?”</p><p>Iorveth blinked. Did he really want to know?</p><p>“Elves.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>Iorveth snorted, and pulled the last few blossoms from the water. They folded tender and cerulean into his callused palms, and he wondered again, as he ever did, how such delicate things survived the vagaries of time.</p><p>“The Tower of the Silver Lady stood here, long ago,” he said, as much to himself as the human, as he stood and carefully placed their final blossoms in his own saddlebags. “I rode here a half-dozen times for the muster, a hundred or more light-armed elves together, racing the wind and whatever else lay in our way.”</p><p>It had been beautiful, in the way only elven architecture could be, standing slim against the skyline at the edges of the world. Humans had destroyed it, like they destroyed everything else.</p><p>He swung onto his horse, the fleabitten spot of her coat not unlike the silver of the mare he used to ride so very long ago, and wondered that he was here now, with this man.</p><p>Roche said nothing for a long time.</p><p>Then, as the passed the farmer’s house, he spoke again.</p><p>“Do you think she’ll like them?”</p><p>Startled from his own thoughts, Iorveth considered. He meant the girl, the elf-maid who apparently still cared about the traditions her forebears had held, here in the twilight of their race. He hoped she did.</p><p>Truth be told, it had been a long time since he had cared what anyone else thought.</p><p>“I think that she will,” he said.</p><p>---</p><p>On their return to the inn, Roche made a beeline for the bar, with his seemingly endless appetite for alcohol.</p><p>How very human of him. The thought came, somehow, without bitterness.</p><p>Iorveth divested him of both sets of flowers, and announced his intentions for an early bed. Already absorbed in a conversation with the bartender about Temerian exports, Roche nodded absently, and patted his shoulder as though they were: friends?</p><p>On his way up the stairs, Iorveth put his hand softly over the place where Roche had touched him. He could not remember the last time anyone had reached out for him without flinching.</p><p>Curled in his blanket on the floor, Iorveth gazed up at the oak-beam ceiling and tried to think of rocking in the embrace of a oak tree, warmed by the sun’s heat. On the cold floor, in the dark, with the room filled with the scent of damiana, lotus, and honeysuckle, he felt almost like weeping, instead.</p><p>It smelled like home.</p><p>He curled over on himself, and thought, not for the first time: What kind of man risks his life for an elf?</p><p>He pushed the thought away, and stared into the dark.</p><p>---</p><p>When Roche returned to the room, hours later, Iorveth heard him before he saw him. Heavy tread, dragging slightly, the creak of the door as it opened and shut, the clank of buckles undone, a stifled curse or three, and the jingle of armor. He didn’t have to open his eyes a slit, to see Roche’s chest illuminated in the moonlight, to know that he’d stripped.</p><p>But he did anyway.</p><p>He watched, silent and still, as the human stripped down to his underwear, and groped over the table for the water pitcher—and stifled a smile as he drank directly out of it. <em>Idiot</em>, he thought, just as Roche turned around and slid his underwear off too, giving Iorveth a full view of his ass for a brief, electric moment, before pulling a different pair on.</p><p>Keeping his breathing regular, Iorveth slipped his eyes shut for a moment—and then opened them again just as Roche tripped over his own boots into bed.</p><p>The smile played over his face again, this time wider.</p><p>After several vigorous rustles and a deep sigh, the bed quieted, and Iorveth shut his eyes, willing sleep to come—</p><p>The soft sound of skin against skin had him opening his eyes again, startled.</p><p>Roche exhaled, a breathy sound like a snort, and the sheets rustled again, in quick, short motions.</p><p>Was he—</p><p>The sound continued for several minutes, varying in intensity and punctuated by a series of small huffs and shuffles that turned Iorveth redder than he was sure he’d ever been in his life. He couldn’t move, couldn’t turn to cover his ears if he’d wanted to, so desperately did he <em>not want to disturb him. </em></p><p>Also, he was very suddenly, uncomfortably hard, and if there were ever a reason not to sleep in your armor, that was a good one.</p><p>When a small almost-moan filled the room, Iorveth bit his hand to keep from answering it.</p><p>The sound stopped, blessedly. Iorveth counted his own breaths, and made it to twenty before heavy human snoring filled the room.</p><p>Well.</p><p>It was a simple enough thing to slip his own hand down his own trousers, and take himself in hand. He fixed his mind on the empty dark, and thought very pointedly of no one in particular. The crest of a brown collarbone, the clench of a stubbled jawline, the coil of tattooed muscle on a broad back stretching and flexing with effort—</p><p>When he came, it was to the thought of Roche’s ass spread open for him in the moonlight, and the sound that Roche made when he came burning in his ears.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dawn broke, and Iorveth woke with it.</p><p>Shame filled him fast as the blinking shuffle of memory burned behind his eyelids; shame, the first sensation he felt even before he opened his eyes—and so, he fled.</p><p>In three breaths, he rolled over and up, shaking off the blanket and Roche’s cloak, still tangled with it. By the fourth breath, the door clattered shut, his bow crested proud on his back, and Iorveth stepped nimble down the stairs two at a time.</p><p>He made it all the way to the stable—and halfway through tacking an irritated grey mare—before reflective thought caught up with him.</p><p>In all the years he’d fought that bastard dh’oine in Flotsam, in Vizima, in the swamps of Velen, he’d never once run from a fight. Outnumbered, outmaneuvered, he had always stood to the bitter end.</p><p>Why start now? To run was to admit guilt. And he<em> wasn’t</em> guilty, he thought a little too loudly, snapping the buckle on the bridle shut.</p><p>Vernon had started it.</p><p>In the cold pink air, his mare huffed in his face, stinking of hay and manure, and he patted her nose gingerly. The idea of a horse was always so much more romantic than the reality of one.</p><p>“Don’t act like I’ve interrupted something important.”</p><p>She butted him with her head, matted forelock leaving straw bits on his gambeson. He sighed, and rubbed her nose to get her off his clothes.</p><p>Today was the last day, anyway. They’d reach the girl by sundown—and he wouldn’t be needed, then. Wouldn’t be needed now if Roche spoke a syllable of Elder, and the girl should know what she’d be given, and how to use it. He could wait until then, make a swift exit after.</p><p>Briefly, he considered the idea of returning to the room, to humiliate the human further by witnessing his no-doubt inelegant waking. But he discarded the idea—not sure he could handle any further exposure to unclothed dh’oine, in any degree. It did things to him. Uncomfortable things.</p><p>Things that did not bear thinking on in the light of day.</p><p>Slower now, he slipped the strap of the mare’s bridle over her head and led her out to the front of the inn to wait by the hitching post. In the slow-rising sunlight, he took a seat on the porch steps and tilted his face up into the sun. The little village still slept, doves and sparrows called one to another, dew trickled along the grass.</p><p>Infested with humans or not, Temeria always did have lovely mornings.</p><p>Iorveth was still waiting some hours later, when Roche strolled out of the inn, somewhat worse for wear. He’d tossed his cloak over the torn sleeve and bandaged arm, as if it mattered what he looked like.</p><p>“Mornin’,” he rumbled, before Iorveth could say anything.</p><p>“Good morning,” said Iorveth, noting the circles under the human’s eyes with something like satisfaction.</p><p>He would not remember anything, surely.</p><p>Roche grunted, and squinted with some menace at the sun overhead, as though it, personally had wronged him. Fine enough direction for his ire to go, as far as Iorveth was concerned. The man didn’t seem interested in much but a meat pie and his hangover.</p><p>They rode out onto the road, side-by-side, in a comfortable silence.</p><p>And even if— if—</p><p>Last night should be<em> Roche’s</em> own shame, and nothing more.</p><p>That thought kept Iorveth upright on his horse, at least, leaving Roche to his thoughts. </p><p>---</p><p>Her name was Timoriel.</p><p>The elf-maiden who posted the notice for damiana, lotus, and honeysuckle was, in fact, to be wed in just a few days. They reached her ramshackle hut on the outskirts of a nonhuman village, uncomfortably close to the lapping edge of yet another bog.</p><p>While she blushed crimson at sight of two older men standing on her mother’s doorstep, arms full of blossoms promising virility, happiness, and pleasure of one’s youth, Timoriel did not flinch at their faces. Scars, human grime and sweat, criminals both. Gods knew she had every reason.</p><p>Iorveth laid the last of the honeysuckle in her arms, turning the scarred side of his face away on instinct.</p><p>“Diolch yn very much, sir,” said the girl, shyly, mixing elder and common together.</p><p>Perhaps he had not needed to fear for Roche’s translation skills after all.</p><p>“Croeso. Ydych chi'n gwybod y geiriau?” he answered, hoping that to ask her if she knew the proper words for the ritual would not offend her.</p><p>She nodded.</p><p>“My mother taught me: Bendithiwch yr undeb hwn, gadewch inni fod yn ffrwythlon a lluosi.”</p><p>Slightly surprised, Iorveth nodded, even as he caught Roche inching slowly back towards the horses out of the corner of his eye. Even here, in the dregs of the world, and cut away from every tradition, every ceremony that ever mattered, some still kept the old customs well enough to pass them down to their children.</p><p>He thought about asking to speak to the parents—but they would know the scar, surely. </p><p>Instead, he bowed deeply, as one might to a bride on her wedding day.</p><p>“Best wishes to your union, little one.”</p><p>She turned a little red again at that, but cradled the flowers even closer to her chest. The sight tugged on a strange part of Iorveth, a long-silent one that made him long for—something. Companionship, communion with others of his race, even just a hand to hold.</p><p>Fools thoughts, those, for a wanted man whose time in the world was long up.</p><p>Roche’s face as they led their horses down to the end of the lane told him he would have to field questions about it, which was not appealing. Might as well have the bandage off now.</p><p>“I should go,” he said, before Roche could open his big dh’oine mouth. “We’ve done what we came to do.”</p><p>Roche did not appear overly moved by this.</p><p>“So, let’s have a drink to celebrate.”</p><p>“You have the self-preservation skills of a drowner, Vernon. You were deeply <em>hungover</em> this morning.”</p><p>He enunciated the word with painful emphasis, so recently reminded of the stings of such an affliction himself.</p><p>“I’m not now, and that’s what matters. Is that a no?” said Roche, struggling to swing onto his horse with only one good arm, short a mounting block.</p><p>You had to had it to them, humans. The bl'oede eternal optimists. <em>Idiot</em>, he thought again, rather more endeared by the stubborn trait than he would like.</p><p>Without thinking, Iorveth cupped his hands for Roche to step and boost himself into the saddle. The man’s thigh brushed against his face, hot and smelling of horse and sweat, the flex of the muscle firm. Though he took the human’s weight for more than a moment, Iorveth did not mind, but found himself blinking up at a now-seated Roche, who looked as confused at the gesture as Iorveth felt.</p><p>If his gaze lingered a little longer than it needed to on the sunlight, rich through golden eyelashes, or the way a small flush colored his cheeks, that mattered to no one.</p><p>“No. I mean, yes, I will have a drink with you.”</p><p>He did not want to say goodbye to this man yet.</p><p>Roche half-grinned, the corner of his thin mouth twitching up like a little snake in the grass. Iorveth hid his own smile in his graceful mount, and could not have told you why pleasing the irritating human pleased him so.</p><p>---</p><p>It turned out that taverns in Velen all looked, smelled, and sounded much the same, and hosted approximately the same types of clientele. No trouble at all to find a dark corner, to turn up hoods and cloaks and order shitty human ale from the shadows. Perhaps dramatic—but caution behooved men with bounties like theirs.</p><p>Theirs. When had he started thinking of himself and Vernon in the same sentence?</p><p>Roche smiled at the waitress as she brought their drinks, and he watched the turn up of his lips with curiosity. The human smiled like a dog baring teeth, like a threat. The barmaid’s courage stood her in good stead, however, and she hid her startle well. She dropped the mugs on their table and swept away without a word.</p><p>“What’d you tell her?” asked Roche, after tipping back his mug without preamble and getting through what looked like half of it. “The girl, I mean.”</p><p>“I asked her if she knew the right words to say. She did.”</p><p>“What words?”</p><p>Sighing, Iorveth took a dainty sip. The ale stung all the way down, and he wrinkled his lip even as Roche openly laughed at him.  </p><p>“It’s the blessing of the bed before a wedding is consummated,” he said, after the taste had mellowed in his mouth some. “The woman covers her lying-place with flowers of a particular meaning, and say a blessing that wishes happiness and fertility to the couple.”</p><p>Common was such a limited language. Fertility fell a sight short of what the rite meant, but the common was irritatingly nonspecific. The rite meant community, the whole family’s blessing and wish for the couple’s ability to bring life into the world.  </p><p>Roche waited, clearly sensing that he wasn’t done.</p><p>“It’s… It’s more than fertility. It’s wishing the continuation of their line, the eyes of our ancestors on their union, and the blessing to continue it. And pleasure in the doing so. Common translation misses the nuances.”</p><p>“Huh. You basically told that kid to have a good fuck.”</p><p>Iorveth rolled his eye.</p><p>“Don’t be crass. It’s ceremonial. And she was obviously of marriageable age.”</p><p>“Obviously?”</p><p>“When did you care this much about elves?”</p><p>Roche shifted uncomfortably.</p><p>“Don’t, really. Just curious.”</p><p>Iorveth considered this for a long moment, as the waitress returned to refill their drinks.</p><p>Finally, as she left, he turned his head sideways to show the human his ear.</p><p>“Look,” he pointed at the lower lobe. “See this?”</p><p>“It’s an ear. Pointed.”</p><p>“We’re born with tips, pointy as you observe. But no lobe to speak of. When the lobe drops, and starts to look more like what you would think of as a human ear, that indicates sexual maturity. Children look more fey than elven, flat above and below. Her lobes had come in.”</p><p>“Huh.”</p><p>Roche stared at his ear with a fixed fascination, for so long that Iorveth began to grow uncomfortable with the attention to such an intimate part of him. He turned back again and covered his one exposed ear almost unconsciously from prying eyes.</p><p>“Does that answer your question?”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Roche, gaze still fixed on the hand that now covered his ear. “Thanks for explaining.”</p><p>Irritated at the scrutiny, Iorveth glared at him.</p><p>“Why do you care, Vernon? Last I checked, you were more interested in our heads on pikes and ears on a string, than studying our mating rituals.”</p><p>“I don’t,” Roche said, quickly.</p><p>A pause, then he added quietly, gaze dropped to the table, “It was my job. Protecting Temeria from threats foreign and domestic—and you and yours were that threat. Don’t know what else you want me to say. Not like I enjoyed it.”</p><p>That was news to Iorveth. He put his hand back down on the table and took a drink, without flinching this time.</p><p>“Why did you stop? Protecting Temeria, that is.”</p><p>Roche met his eyes again, and the anguish there was so raw he regretted asking. </p><p>“I didn’t stop," said Roche, and he could have been  grieving a lover for how tenderly he said it. "Temeria died, Iorveth.”</p><p>Iorveth. The sound of his name in <em>that</em> mouth. How long had it been since someone had called him by name?</p><p>“No it didn’t. You won your freedom?”</p><p>“Oh sure, it was free in name—in name only,” said Roche, the words leaving his mouth bitter and raw. “Land overrun by black ones, trade only with the black ones, technically a protectorate of Nilfgaard. Our courts, with foreign oversight. Our trade—with foreign oversight. Geralt was right. With a child on the throne? That’s slow suicide.”</p><p>He shook his head.</p><p>“At least you got your free elven state. I got to fight tooth and nail for my country and watch it slip through my fingers. Nothing I, or anyone, could do.”</p><p>Leaning forward conspiratorially, he added, “And you know what the worst part is?”</p><p>Iorveth did not.</p><p>“Nilfgaard,” pronounced Roche slowly, “Isn’t even that bad. They’re just boring. Emhyr is a lot of things, but he’s not evil, just fucking <em>efficient</em>.”</p><p>He said the word like a curse, and Iorveth wondered about that.</p><p>“You know the point I gave up? Met him in person. He was fucking reasonable. He didn’t gloat, didn’t try to exhort promises, just wanted to talk about trade routes and famine alleviation. How to stop the plague spread, new crops to last the winter, better seed. When was the last time anyone cared about shit like that?”</p><p>“Sounds like a better king than your Foltest,” observed Iorveth, with some dry satisfaction.</p><p>“Shut up,” said Roche. “I don’t want to talk about it.”</p><p>“Is that why you’re out here? Couldn’t stand to work with them?”</p><p>“Couldn’t stand to watch them do better.”</p><p>“I understand,” said Iorveth, and Roche nodded, saving him the explanation.  </p><p>They fell into silence for a moment, the clatter of dishes and rumble of other bar patrons’ conversations rising and falling. Again, Iorveth felt surprise at how easy it was to be silent with this man. Most humans filled silence like livestock.</p><p>“Sometimes I almost miss Flotsam,” said Roche, finally, sounding amused.  </p><p>“What? That shithole?</p><p>“Was easy. Fighting you. Bad guys, good guys. No questions about who was who.”</p><p>Iorveth suspected they had differing viewpoints on that topic.</p><p>“Is that so?”</p><p>Roche shook his head, as if looking back on the wild oats of a teenager, instead of the most formative years of his short life.  </p><p>“Good times, but gone.” He raised his mug with a wry half-smile. “Here’s to the men we were.”</p><p><em>People died, Vernon</em>—but Iorveth met him halfway anyway. <em>If we start counting the dead, we may never stop.</em></p><p>“To the men we were,” he echoed, feeling something like grief.</p><p>The heavy clunk of their mugs together sent a shudder down his arm. This strange companionship—nothing like the Scoia’tael, or the halls of his fathers, or anywhere else. Here, no one looked to him for guidance, or expected anything from him, good or bad.</p><p>He took a long draught. In the silence that followed, he felt the alcohol in his veins, and closed his eyes to the golden spin of it. The room was warm against the cold outside, the hearth fire hot, and the face across from him something akin to friendly.</p><p>“This sure beats the winters in the swamp,” he said. Flotsam had been shit in the winter.</p><p>Roche laughed.</p><p>“Fair. And I sure as hell don’t miss the food.”</p><p>“No crying children here either.”</p><p>Roche’s eyes widened. “You? Kids? Why?”</p><p>“Refugee elves, we were close enough to their own kind. Many half-elf or quarter-elf kids ended up in our camp for some time. Until we could get them to a more… appropriate place.”</p><p>“Never full elf?”</p><p>“No. Never. None of those to speak of, anymore.”</p><p>Roche grimaced, as though he’d forgotten Iorveth’s ties to a dead and dying race.</p><p>“Well,” said the human, in an apparent attempt to change the subject, “What’s next for you?”</p><p>Iorveth shook his head, drunk enough now that little stars floated under his eyelid when he closed it.</p><p>“Same old,” he rumbled. Omitting that there was no same old anything, anymore.</p><p>In the pause afterwards, Roche’s fingers reached out and brushed down Iorveth’s forearm, braced against the table.</p><p>“For what it’s worth,” he said slowly, “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“What for?”</p><p>The bitter death of elven-kind, decades in the making, lay at many doors, but not at Roche’s. The <em>hate</em> he’d long felt for Vernon Roche was simple, straightforward. Efficient. Warm and sneaking in at every door, a constant in his life when nothing else was. And he, at least, had borne enough to understand some fundamental truths in life.</p><p>The human’s hand lay outstretched on the table beside his own, and without thinking too hard about it, he took it.</p><p>Roche did not even flinch. The human’s palm rested hot against his own, damp with sweat and rough with callus in a half-dozen places. After a brief moment, Roche squeezed his hand.  </p><p>“Want to go upstairs?”</p><p>The hot-flash of anticipation, of weight in that statement, of implication cut across his blurred consciousness—but in another moment he decided he did not care.</p><p>He nodded.</p><p>They went up to their room—a single room again, who had done that? – and shut the door behind. Winter evening had stolen the light from the room, so they undressed in the dark, clumsy fingers struggling each with their own buckles.</p><p>Roche lay down first, and before Iorveth could think past his frozen toes and fingers to ask any further questions, patted the bed beside him.</p><p>“It’s cold. Join me?”</p><p>Suddenly, he wanted nothing more. This choice unfolded like the only logical next choice in a series of choices laid out for him long ago. Of course, it would be him. Who else?</p><p>Bootless, wearing less armor than he had in years, Iorveth slid under the blankets. Before he had time to settle, or formulate a complaint about the nesting habits of dh’oine, Roche was sliding over and putting arms around him, and he was warm, so warm.</p><p>Fuzzy with drink, Iorveth turned towards the human and melted into his grasp, feeling the gnawing want he’d carried all day dissolve at the first touch of hands. The hot lines of Roche’s body pressed up against him, as if he was as cold as he was, hungry for touch, for warmth.</p><p>If Roche wanted to kill him like this, he wouldn’t mind.</p><p>If Roche wanted a lot of things, Iorveth decided, as the moments passed and the heat of human touch seeped into his skin, he wouldn’t mind those, either.</p><p>With both arms wrapped around the elf’s chest, however, Roche simply curled closer, and within two minutes, soft snoring filled the room.</p><p>Held, and marveling, Iorveth placed his hand gently over Roche’s, and soon followed.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Epilogue</h2></a>
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    <p>They rode in near-silence for three days, each mile bringing them closer to the Temerian border.</p><p>At the crossroads sign, Vernon Roche turned to the elf beside him with a deep intake of breath. Dirty, in torn tunic and bandaged arm, he looked nothing like the proud soldier who had cursed elves and hunted them in the forests of Vizima.</p><p>“Will you come with me?”</p><p>The words spattered out of him.</p><p>Iorveth considered for a long moment. The road back to Vergen wound back into the trees behind Roche’s head, and his eye lingered on it, what lay down it. The weight of the past looming behind them.  </p><p>It’s a strange world, he thought. You cling to what you have.</p><p>“Yes,” said Iorveth.</p><p>He turned his face to the road ahead, and did not ask where it led. </p>
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